Monday, January 25, 2010

Some new music worth mentioning - the Pearl Jam album "Backspacer", is excellent. I don't know if it's because this is the 1st album to be released by Monkeywrench (Pearl Jam-owned) or because they decided to ditch the preachy politics this time around. In any event, it's a much better set of songs than either of their previous 2 efforts ("Pearl Jam" and "Riot Act"). I was beginning to grow tired of their music, each album had a few good songs, but no standouts. This disc has 9 out of 11 worth listening to more than once, which is more than I can say about most new discs. I embedded some lame static video a fan put together for youtube, but it's a good song from the disc.

A few good singles -

I found a single the other day by a band a friend recommended to me - The Soulsavers. They have a new disc out ("Broken") but I downloaded a single from their 2nd disc, the single is called "Revival" and it's very good. The Soulsavers are 2 guys from the UK. Basically a production team, they specialize in downtempo electronica, but got Mark Lanegan, a great lead singer (previously with Screaming Trees) to sing some vocals on their last 2 discs. "Revival" sounds like a cross between gospel, soul and rock. The cool video for the song is below. The new disc sounds really good as well, have to give it a few more listens.

Res looks like she has some new music coming soon...her myspace page has a few songs streaming, the best of which ("For Who You Are", a re-make of Three Dog Night's "One") sound excellent. She disappeared since her last (1st) cd ("How I Do"), which was an incredible debut cd and worth hearing. Some examples from her 1st disc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuv6OGsnc9Q